COMPTON >> Her face marred by a tattoo that a pimp had used to mark her as his property, the teenage girl told the judge in a plaintive voice, “I just want to go home.”

Later, another teen girl wearing too much makeup and too little clothing admitted running away from a group home for juvenile delinquents after attacking someone there for insulting her.

“Someone called me a prostitute and I lost it,” she explained to the judge. “I blacked out.”

Her bravado faded, however, when a probation officer explained that she was found wandering the streets afterwards, having gotten lost while looking for her mother, who had abandoned her.

When she cried, she revealed the child she still was, underneath the makeup, sheer top and short skirt, with high heels and matching red purse.

This is the STAR Court in Compton, a pilot program that specializes in cases involving commercially sexually exploited girls, and Commissioner Catherine Pratt presides with a focus on rehabilitation over punishment. The acronym stands for Succeeding Through Achievement and Resilience.

Pratt does not immediately dismiss the prostitution-related charges against the girls so they can remain eligible for wraparound services offered by Los Angeles County’s juvenile justice system. These include placement in a group home or juvenile hall — a safe place away from pimps — gang intervention programs, educational opportunities, job training, and even family reunification services.

“Most of these kids have experienced betrayal, if not worse, from people in positions of authority throughout their whole lives that skews their view of the world,” Pratt said. “What we’re trying to do for these kids is to show them there are people in positions of authority who do care.”

When the girls are ready and able to leave the life, she can order their juvenile criminal records sealed, allowing them to start over.

STAR Court began hearing cases in early 2012, thanks to an annual $350,000 federal grant that lasts through the end of 2014. After the grant expires in December, STAR Court’s future remains uncertain.

A separate federal grant enabled the county Probation Department to create a handpicked team to help the girls embark on the process of recovery. They partner with child advocates and legal advocates from nonprofit organizations, with group homes capable of providing intensive counseling, and with agencies like the county Department of Children and Family Services and the Public Defender’s Office.

“It’s the support system the girls never had before,” probation officer Terrika Woolfolk said. “When they call, we answer our phones, even on weekends, even at night. We’re there for them.”

Sara Elander, a child advocate with Saving Innocence, a Los Angeles nonprofit that fights sexual exploitation of children, visits the girls once a week and helps them with everything from enrolling in school and setting up doctor’s appointments, to applying for internships, dressing for a job interview, creating a budget.

“These girls have experienced trauma that I’ll never know but what I can do is tell them, ‘Let’s work on college, housing, et cetera, so that your previous life is no longer an option’,” she said. “We want to allow them to feel empowered about who they are, and not feel defeated because of who they’ve been.”

Alliance for Children’s Rights lawyer Allison Newcombe enables the girls to secure benefits through extended foster care and prepares them for the transition into independence. She appreciates the juvenile justice system realizing, finally, that they are victims who need help.

“The girls think what we tell them and, for the longest time, we were saying they chose this life for themselves,” Newcombe said. “How can they not think so when they’re getting arrested, placed in juvenile hall, taken to court in orange jumpsuits and shackles, and told this is their fault?”

“I was an extern in law school when one of the girls came into the court and said, ‘This isn’t fair! Why am I in here, when he (the pimp) is still out there?’” Newcombe added. “I thought that was such an obvious question to be asking!”

Not all the girls take advantage of what STAR Court has to offer. Some go AWOL from group homes, threaten staff at juvenile halls, go back to their pimps.

During a recent session, while the judge was hearing cases in the courtroom, Woolfolk’s team met in an adjacent office and tried to figure out how to rescue one girl who said her pimp was back to selling her in a motel room, and another girl who had overdosed on drugs and been placed on suicide watch.

County Department of Mental Health acting deputy director Terri Boykins explained many of the girls came from broken homes, have a long history of abuse and neglect, and developed an “ambivalent attitude” toward their pimps.

“Many of them grew up with nothing, and sometimes that pimp was the only one who ever gave them a meal or clean clothes,” Boykins said.

DMH psychologist Erica Reynoso said there are parallels between sexually exploited children and youths, and battered women — they have difficultly walking away from an abusive relationship.

“Often, because they’re so manipulated, they don’t even identify themselves as victims,” Reynoso said. “They think, ‘I’m choosing this,’ because of what their pimp has been telling them. It’s part of the trauma.”

The judge who presides over STAR Court understands only too well.

“My older sister, who essentially raised me, was in a very abusive relationship and that man ended up killing her,” Pratt said.

“We all make bad choices and most of us get a chance to live them down, to wake up the next morning and make changes, but my sister never did,” Pratt added. “I want these girls to have the chance to outlive their mistakes.”